We present in this article several materials about the WWII Lend-Lease program. The materials are comprised of publications from a friendly channel, our translation of a Russian article, Marshal Zhukov’s memoirs, and our closing thoughts on solidarity.
Lend-Lease
Today is a good opportunity to dispel another myth: the myth of the US Lend-Lease Act during World War II and the idea that it was precisely this aid that enabled the Soviet Union to defeat the German Reich.
In fact, this aid from the United States—which also went to Great Britain—accounted for only four to ten percent of the Red Army’s total materiel during World War II. The USSR produced 90 to 96 percent of its weapons, equipment, and supplies itself.
In addition, there was also a reverse lend-lease relationship: the USSR supplied raw materials such as manganese, platinum, chromium, asbestos, leather and even gold to the USA to support the production of those relief supplies that were later sent back to the Soviet front via the Arctic convoy.
The USSR – and later Russia – repaid $722 million to the US Treasury for this aid.
Lend-Lease: how much did the USSR pay for the help of the Allies in the Great Patriotic War
– translated from a Dzen article, 18.10.2018
Lend-lease is a program of “crediting” of the US allies during the Second World War. The supplies included military equipment, food, equipment and raw materials. How long have we been paying off our lend-lease debts?
How did they help?
Historian Lebedev writes that during the Great Patriotic War, the USSR received from the United States more than 18,000 aircraft (including fighter jets “Aerocobra”, “Kitty-hawk”, “Tomahawk”), 12,000 tanks. Communication equipment: 100,000 kilometers of telephone wires, 2 million telephones. Products: 15 million pairs of boots, more than 50 thousand tons of shoe leather; as well as more than a million tons of food and provisions; several thousand steam locomotives, tank cars on wheels, locomotives and self-loading wagons. They were used to deliver more than 300,000 tons of explosives and petroleum products to the front; and military-technical plants received copper and bronze, aluminium and special steel.
The total volume of American supplies amounted to about 11 billion US dollars. According to the lend-lease law, only what had survived the war had to be paid for. Coordination on the total amount of the payment began in 1948.
How much do we owe?
The negotiations between the USSR and the USA regarding the lend-lease debt took place in several rounds. The Americans have set the debt amount at $2.7 billion. During the negotiations in 1948, the Soviet representatives were ready to pay an insignificant amount. Naturally, this caused a refusal from the Americans. In 1949, negotiations also did not lead to anything. In 1951, the American government twice reduced the amount of debt to $800 million, but the USSR agreed to pay only $300 million.
It was not until 1972 that the United States and the USSR reached an agreement on debt repayment. According to the document, the USSR had committed to pay $722 million by 2001, including interest. In 1973, the USSR made payments in the amount of $48 million, but debt repayment was suspended due to trade measures that were unprofitable for the USSR (the Jackson-Vanik amendment). It was only in 1990 that the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new maturity date for the lend lease was set — 2030 and a final amount of $674 million.
After the collapse of the USSR, the lend-lease debt was reassigned to Boris Yeltsin. Thus, of the total supply of $11 billion, the USSR (later the Russian Federation) pledged to pay $722 million, that is, 7% of the supply of $11 billion.
How much was paid?
By 1973, 3 payments worth $48 million had been made. There were 3 mandatory payments: $12 million on October 18, 1972; $24 million on July 1, 1973; and $12 million on July 1, 1975. By agreement with the United States, the remainder – $674 million – was to be paid by 2001. In 1990, under a new agreement, the Soviet side pledged to pay $674 million dollars by 2030, taking into account inflation, a total of $100 million of the 1946 model.
After the collapse of the USSR, the Russian Federation signed bilateral “zero option” agreements with the former republics, under which the Russian Federation assumes all debts of the USSR. In exchange, the former republics of the Soviet Union gave up their share of the assets of the USSR. So, on April 2, 1993, the Russian Federation assumed the debts of the USSR, including the obligations under Lend-Lease. The debts were divided into government debts (the Paris Club) and debts to banks (the London Club). The US Lend-Lease debt was finally paid and closed as part of the settlement with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006.
♦️♦️♦️
👉 It must remembered that the USSR sent gold and other raw materials to the USA. As one example, the British cruiser “Edinburgh”, sunk in May 1942 by a German submarine (as part of the return convoy QP 11), was carrying 4,570 kg of gold from the USSR to Britain. In 1981, divers extracted this gold from the cruiser’s hull.
Originally published on our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.
Zhukov talking to the American soldiers
Word to Georgy Zhukov: The Overall Merit of Lend-Lease and the Second Front
From Georgy Zhukov’s memoirs “Recollections and Reflections”, volume 2, 1974 edition, translation from 1985, pages 459-460 (all highlighting is ours):
The Allied Supreme Command was greatly alarmed and concerned about further action by the enemy in the Ardennes. These apprehensions were completely shared by Churchill. On January 6, 1945, he sent Stalin a personal message which revealed his anxiety. He said that heavy battles were under way in the West and that the Allied Forces, having sustained heavy general losses and forfeited initiative, had come up against a complex situation.
Churchill and Eisenhower sent Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder to Moscow to deliver the letter, thus revealing their anxiety to receive a quick response from the Soviet Union. They hoped that if the Soviet Government orders a swift offensive that would force Hitler to remove his shock units from the Western front and move them to the East, to fight against the Red Army.
It will be recalled that, true to its Allied commitments, in exactly a week’s time the Soviet Government launched a large-scale offensive along the entire front which shook the German forces to their very foundations in all strategic directions and forced them to retreat with immense losses to the Oder-Neisse-Moravska Ostrava line, and in the spring compelled them to abandon Vienna and the south-eastern part of Austria.
Recalling that offensive, Eisenhower said:
“For us it was a long-awaited minute. We all felt relief, particularly after we had received news that the Soviet offensive was proceeding with great success. We were sure the Germans would now be unable to reinforce their Western front.”
Unfortunately, after the war, when the surviving Hitlerite generals and some prominent military figures from among our former Allies began to flood the book market with their reminiscences, such objective assessments of the events of World War II have become increasingly scarce while the distortion of facts and insinuation have come to be a frequent occurrence. The most overzealous ones even went so far as to allege that it was not the Red Army that had helped the Americans in their battles in the Ardennes but the Americans who had saved the Red Army.
We also touched upon the deliveries under the Lend-Lease programme. Everything seemed clear in that respect then. Nevertheless, for years after the war bourgeois historiography has asserted that it was the Allied deliveries of armaments, materials and foodstuffs that had played a decisive role for our victory over the enemy.
True, the Soviet Union did receive supplies the economy needed so badly: machinery, equipment, materials, fuel and foodstuffs. For example, over 400,000 vehicles, a great number of locomotives and communication facilities were brought from the United States and Britain. But could all that have had a decisive influence on the course of the war? I have already mentioned that the Soviet industry developed on such a scale during the war that it provided the front and rear with everything needed. I see no sense in going into all that once more.
As for the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under Lend-Lease from the United States and Britain about 18,000 aircraft and over 11,000 tanks. That comprised a mere 4 per cent of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet people produced to equip its army during the war. Consequently, there is no ground for talk about the decisive role of the deliveries under Lend-Lease.
As for the tanks and aircraft supplied to us by the British and US governments, they, to be frank, did not display high fighting qualities; especially tanks which, running on petrol, would burn like torches.
Lend-Lease: the working class solidarity
Lend-Lease, or rather the desire to help USSR in the fight against fascism coming from the working class in the West, deserves a separate mention.
At people’s level, this desire was sincere and devoid of the war profiteering, displayed by the political and capitalist tops. And it is this display of solidarity in the common cause that should be celebrated and kept alive in our collective memory.
The cynical writing out the USSR of WWII history by the ruling class is not only a deliberate construction of lies, it is a direct mockery of the solidarity of working class people – a direct attack on our collective memory meant to weaken us in the anti-imperialist struggle ahead. Fight back!